


Oh My Lovely

by reddeadandrollups



Category: Red Dead Redemption (Video Games)
Genre: ALSO LISTEN TO OH MY LOVELY FROM THE SOUNDTRACK OBVS, Animal Death, Cancer, Gen, I Made Myself Cry, M/M, Medical Procedures, Other, also Shrike by Hozier and In My Place by Coldplay, animal cancer, cathartic writing, friends Supporting each other uwu deal with it, horse death, listen to Mountain Banjo while you read this, morston if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2020-12-29
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:47:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28414143
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reddeadandrollups/pseuds/reddeadandrollups
Summary: John took in a mustang knowing he was a ticking time bomb. Arthur agreed to help when the time came.OrWhat it’s like to lose a horse you’ve truly bonded to.
Relationships: John Marston & Arthur Morgan, John Marston/Arthur Morgan
Kudos: 15





	Oh My Lovely

**Author's Note:**

> Nothing graphic but this work does describe equine lymphoma vaguely as well as euthanasia methods of the early 1900s but it’s extremely vague, though I still wanted to put the warning here. 
> 
> Also songs to definitely listen to if you want extra vibes for this
> 
> Oh My Lovely from rdr2 soundtrack 
> 
> Mountain Banjo from rdr2 soundtrack 
> 
> Shrike by Hozier 
> 
> In My Place by Coldplay 
> 
> Fix You by Coldplay

It wasn’t like John Marston hadn’t ever lost a horse in his lifetime.  
Rachel had been snakebit by an ill-tempered rattler--before her, Old Boy had lost his life in a hail of Pinkerton bullets now what seemed like a lifetime ago.  
But this is different.  
This is staring at soft and soulful brown eyes as they blink at him slowly, asking the request of him he knew would come sooner rather than later.  
This isn’t a horse at the end of his life--he doesn’t even look all that sick save for the lackluster roughness of his grey coat...That, and the grotesque bulge in his neck right smack in the middle of his throat.  
The mustang seems to radiate vitality almost, but as time has passed that radiance has dulled like tarnished brass as the cancer in the gelding’s throat grew.  
And when the day had come that the food in the trough went untouched, John knows it’s now time to make the trudge he’s been dreading for a while now. 

Arthur has been sitting on the porch of his own little holding, a dime novel in hand when he hears the tell-tale scuffle of John’s steel-capped boots against the ground sending pebbles a-skittering with each decidedly less bouncy than normal step.  
There’s almost a melancholy tone to the younger man’s gait if such a thing were possible, and he finally lifts his gaze from the words on the pages before him to greet Marston, possibly to tell him off for disturbing the tranquility.  
Catching sight of John’s expression is all it takes to have the words stick in his throat and have Arthur Morgan all but throw his paperback aside, close the remaining distance between them at a trot so he can quickly envelop the younger man in his arms and practically crush John into a tight embrace.  
“Ain’t gotta say n’un,” Arthur reassures in a low murmur against brunette waves, soft with a recent washing, a hand coming up to cradle the back of John’s head as the latter buries his face in the crook where Arthur’s neck and shoulder meet.  
“It ain’t fair!” John shouts, muffled, though his rough voice reverberates through Arthur’s collarbone and shoulder. “I know I got other horses, Morgan, but it ain’t fuckin’ fair.”  
“I know, I know,” Arthur soothes, his other hand rubbing small circles between John’s broad shoulders. “Ain’t fair at all.”

Arthur isn’t all too thrilled with the upcoming task of dosing out enough morphine to literally kill a horse--but he has always kept the core belief that a living creature that is suffering should be given its well-deserved peace at the end. 

John clings to Arthur tightly, as if he fears that if he lets go he may go careening off into the void himself.  
Lets the warmth of the muscles around him seep into his being akin to some sort of lifeblood; lets the heady scents of bourbon and tobacco smoke, leather and horse and something so Arthur--clean, light soap, dried sweat from the afternoon heat, that “fancy, dandy-smellin’” and sandalwood-rich aftershave from Saint-Denis--calm him further as the older man’s fingers card through John’s own messy and in need of a trim locks.  
“Alright, Marston,”, Arthur says finally, holding John at arm's length. “Reckon we don’t drag this out too long, darlin’.”

Darlin’.  
Arthur wonders if John has ever minded that when it has slipped past his lips before he could catch himself sounding like a fool in love.  
Or the way he leans his head against John’s in an affectionate way whenever they are around each other, Marston once comparing the older to a cat while they were heavily imbibing--though, to be fair, Arthur still ain’t too sure if that’s good or not.  
Or how he takes the time to make his way to John’s home at least every other day to share a meal and see if he needs anything looked after, never brings up how John does the same for him, either.

Arthur makes quick work of injecting Comet with the morphine--numbers were never his strong suit, and he knows the dosage for painkilling, but he doesn’t want to prolong the poor beast’s suffering by miscalculation, and so the bottle will do the trick and fifteen dollars for a new one is a small price to pay for that large reassurance.  
He eases the mustang to the ground as the gelding starts going under with the help of the barn door and his own substantial bulk, guiding the animal to lay on the ground.  
“Go sit with ‘m,” he tells John, moving to give both horse and owner some privacy, something he longed for losing his last two.  
“Stay?”  
John’s question is so soft it’s barely above a whisper, hand grabbing for Arthur’s wrist as it brushes past.  
“Please?”  
There’s a glimpse of that scared teenager Arthur first met nearly twenty years ago in those sad, gunmetal eyes looking at him from under knit-together brows--And there used to be a time when Arthur would have shook the long fingers from around his wrist and snapped that John should grow up and be a man.  
But there are no pseudo-father figures to impress, no need for false bravado any longer in their lives  
And so, Arthur sinks to the floor next to John as the younger leans his back against the door next to his mustang’s head. 

John’s numb and in pain all that the same time and there’s a strange sense of deja vu about it as he runs his fingers through Comet’s forelock, trying to think of something meaningful--anything, really--to say.  
He feels stupid, pouring his soul out to a horse, but it’s good catharsis to let the steed know how much John adored him out of all the other horses and how John will miss him, bratty attitude and all.  
“And if ever a horse could convey emotion,” Arthur later writes in his journal, “Then I saw nothing but love glaring like a roaring wildfire for John Marston, and I can’t say as I blame the horse, neither…”

John isn’t sure when the tears started but he had thought he had a good hold on his emotions. Reckon’d he’d be able to keep himself in check over a damned horse…  
“You can rest east, boah,” comes the soothing rumble, if distant thunder was a voice, over his shoulder and he sees Arthur’s arm snake into his peripheral as Morgan reaches under John’s arm to pet the velvet muzzle.  
“Yeah, boy,” John manages around the lump in his throat that makes it feel like he swallowed a rock. “You can rest, now.”  
John thought he’d be able to keep himself together until the moment the beautiful mustang draws his last shallow, shuddering breath, and then the dam behind Marston’s storm-cloud eyes breaks.  
Drawn up knees and crossed arms try to bury, to hide the un-manly sobs that wrack John’s body. He presses his forehead into his elbows as tears run in hot rivers down his face.  
And there it is again: that blindingly numb-pain just behind his ribs he last felt when he thought he was losing Arthur forever--lungs and legs and eyes all burning as if set aflame with kerosene even as cold rain drenched them both, a pleading and still ever bullheaded tone in his ear urging him on, away along with the echoes of distant shouts and gunfire; the smell of gunpowder and wet earth and blood and that scent filling his sense. 

And then John’s warm and feels as if he’s being pressed inwards from all around him and a small pinpoint of pain where Arthur’s chin is digging into tense shoulder muscles as he holds John impossibly tight.  
Sweet, gentle murmurs brush against his neck as Arthur tries to apply them like a salve.  
“Got yeh,” he hears or rather feels, Arthur hum. “I got yeh, John.”  
When John pulls back from Arthur just enough to look at him like the day he turned up more than half dead with a foot in the grave at John’s little wilderness camp in the Ambarino wilds two days past Beaver Hollow’s bloodbath--a bit of shock, and a whole lot of thankful relief--he can see a strange sort of sheen in his oceanic teal gaze.  
It makes John break again, turning to bury his face in Arthur’s chest and lets his grief wash over him.  
As the violence of his tears calms, John focuses instead on the deep and steady lub-dub thrum beneath his ear that's lulled him to sleep many a night.  
By the way he’s breathing—a bit shaky, paced slow and deep— Arthur’s grieving with him, though John would never embarrass him for that or for the stray droplets of wetness that fell from the man’s chin and into John’s messy hair.  
“C’mon,” Arthur coaxes gently, pulling John onto his lap to hold him better. “You sit here as long as you need.” 

And so, the once-notorious outlaws Morgan and Marston sit like that, the former rocking the latter back and forth gently as he cries into Arthur’s chest, seeking solace in his solid warmth.  
And it’s like this they stay on the barn floor for minutes, or hours, their sense of time thrown for a loop by the events of the day, until John feels like he can cope, perhaps, with the passing of his best horse. Better than Old Boy and Rachel combined, the calmest mustang the man had tripped across since Arthur’s Boadicea.  
“We…” There's a lump in his throat still as he pulls back from Arthur and wipes furiously at the wetness on his cheeks as he struggles to steady his voice enough to finish his sentence.  
“Where?” Arthur asks softly and for once John is glad the man can read him like a damned book.  
“The tree...at the side of the house…”  
“Alright,” the blonde murmurs, moving to shift John off his lap and shove himself to his feet with a few popping protests from his knees and back.  
The unspoken communications between them are something they’ve both always been grateful for, more so now when neither feels like they can voice their thoughts without the tears starting to flow again.  
It hadn’t gone unnoticed to the brunette that Arthur’s cheeks were damp and his eyes glistened like the sun hitting the Cotorra Springs.  
“He weren’t even your horse,” John mumbles, averting his gaze as Arthur tries to daub at the tear stains on his face with the sleeve of his shirt as surreptitiously as possible.  
“I still liked him,” comes the mumbled reply, and after a brief pause, “And I don’t like it when you’re hurtin’, John. Tears me up inside t’see ya like this and know I can’t fix it.”  
“No,” John says so softly Arthur barely hears him, moving to walk close to the radiated warmth as he moves towards the house with a shovel in hand. Their shoulders bump gently as they plod towards the large cherry blossom tree at the side of John’s farmhouse, boots a steady crunch on gravel and the dead grass of a New Austin winter.  
“But it hurts less,” John finally continues, breaking the silence that had befallen them as Arthur marks out the measurements for Comet’s grave.  
There’s a pause in the quiet ministrations.  
Hazel-teal eyes look up to meet cobalt, and the way the older man tilts his head reminds John of an inquisitive pup.  
“Havin’ you here,” he adds helpfully.  
“Ah.”  
“You don’ believe me?”  
Arthur just shakes his head a bit even as the barest hint of a smile quirks the corner of one side of his mouth.  
“I’m jus’ doin’ what any decent person would.”  
It's John’s turn to shake his head in disbelief, folding his arms across himself tighter as Arthur stands before him.  
“No, ya ain’t,” he argues, none of the normal bite to his retort present.  
“You’ve done more than that,” Marston continues. “I’ve seen people put horses down—hell, Arthur, I watched you have to put Boadi down on the run—most people wouldn’t think of using morphine like that.”  
Arthur looks at his boots. It’s true, what John says, and Arthur had only heard that the veterinarian had only tried it after witnessing it by accident and had no gun on hand.  
John’s gentle but firm hand on his cheek makes him look back up to a soft expression akin to love.  
“You gave him peace,” John states firmly. “He weren’t scared and he ain’t in pain no more.”  
“And you gave him the best years of his life when most people woulda put him down.”  
It sounds harsher than Arthur intended but John nods with a sad smile as his thumb brushes along the sharp line of Arthur’s cheekbone.  
“Yeah, we did good,” he replies, earning himself a light flush under his palmas Arthur cuts his gaze down again and a gentle silence settles between them once more, disturbed only by the breeze that rustles the prairies grasses and their hair in similar fashions.  
“Go inside while I move him,” Arthur says finally, his voice soft. “Y’ain’t need to see that part. Go lie down fer a bit.”  
John’s about to protest, offer to help, but the brief, soft peck of affection Arthur leans in to press against the corner of his lips stops him and he simply nods before wearily trudging inside.

John does not remember falling asleep, but the next thing he’s aware of after his head hit his pillow is a warm, calloused palm stroking against the stubble on his cheek followed by strong arms under his shoulders and knees, lifting him to his feet. He lets Arthur wrap an arm around his waist and lead him outside to the waiting dusk, even with the damp of Morgan’s sweat starting to seep into the side of John’s union suit.  
He’s worked hard—harder than John could right now, so what was a bit of clamminess as a trade-off?

John’s knees nearly buckle at the sight, and he’s ever the more thankful for the thickly muscled arms secured around his midsection, holding him up.  
Arthur’s decorated the grave with all sorts of wildflowers—where he got them all, John’s not sure, reckons at least some have come from the plants Arthur keeps indoors on his windowsills.  
Beautiful quartz chunks that John knows Arthur always stops to pick up—his obsession with pretty rocks has always amused the younger man—spell out “Comet Marston” in the freshly churned and piled earth that now covers the majestic creature in his final resting place.  
And even though John knows damn well that Arthur Morgan cannot control the weather, it feels like the older of the two of them has asked the universe for a favor:  
To have the setting sun paint the sky as if the whole horizon is a blazing inferno of a wildfire.

“I mighta went a lil’ overboard,” Arthur mumbles, the hand that isn’t on John’s waist coming up to rub at the back of his neck as he is wont to do when embarrassed.  
“Shut up,” John chokes out before breaking again, sleeve wiping furiously at the tears streaming down his cheeks. “It’s beautiful. It’s—it’s perfect.”  
He turns and wraps his arms tightly around Arthur as the blonde rocks him gently side to side, sniffles muffled by the thick cotton of Arthur’s shirt as he’s hoisted up into a tight embrace.  
“C’mon,” Arthur says, wrapping John’s legs around him as he carries him towards the farmhouse. “Gonna get ya a hot soak and get yeh t’bed, you had a long day.”  
John hums an agreement, the sound turning more towards contented ss Arthur kicks the door shut behind them. 

Arthur makes good on his promise as he almost always does, and John gets to unwind in a tub of sudsy bathwater that’s just the right temperature and smells of lavender and chamomile, a pair of strong and sure hands working the tension from his neck and shoulders.  
Fresh linens are on the bed—John figures that’s what Arthur was doing while he finished washing up—and the oil lamps are turned low, just bright enough that John won’t stub his toes on the way to the bed.  
He can hear Arthur washing up and then tidying up the bathroom before knocking about the kitchen on the prowl for something.  
“What are you doing, Morgan?” he rasps out, his voice rougher than normal the strain of the day.  
“Getting bourbon, ya dumbass,” Arthur responds, padding into the room in darned socks and a pair of jeans slung low on his hips.  
Arthur’s next to him on the bed, handing him the glass of booze which he downs before settling under the sheets and resting his head into the pillow.  
“Staying?” he asks softly and there’s a moment’s pause before Arthur only nods and drains his own glass, douses the lamps, and crawls under the duvet next to John.  
“For as long as you need,” Arthur murmurs as John tucks himself into the warm, broad chest and under Arthur’s chin as strong arms pull him close.  
“Thank you, Arthur,” he whispers on the verge of sleep.  
“Of course, John,” comes the equally quiet and sleepy response before both men let exhaustion overtake them, wrapped up in the comfort of one another. 

~FIN~


End file.
